These thoughts represent my life as a poet and my questions, amazing moments, poignant exchanges, compassion, and outrage at times, gathered as I work in public school and community settings. My goal is to instill a passion for language, reading, writing, and the art of poetry in anyone willing to suspend belief that they cannot express or interpret for themselves.

Pages

Motto

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

When I was a
child, I knew I wanted to write and I wanted to be a teacher. Little did I know
the convoluted journey my life would become and the unconventional ways I would
meet both of these aspirations.

I did not pursue
the traditional teacher’s route but worked in any different aspects of business
throughout my 20s and 30s, elements of which I have applied throughout my
career since. Being involved in business from the bottom up, including being
part of a team that built and managed an arts-in-education nonprofit agency,
has taught me a great deal of the nuts and bolts of an organization and
building a constituency, as well as serving those people who benefit.

As an
independent artist educator for the past 12 years, I have been in countless
classrooms at every grade level. Over the past 6 years, I have been
writer-in-residence in the Middletown Extended Central School District in
Orange County, NY, serving two elementary schools, two middle schools, and one
high school as an element of their district-wide literacy initiative. In
addition, I have been in residence in two to five other districts annually for
nearly 10 years. I have averaged a teaching practice of nearly 2,000 students
and 70 teachers and teaching assistants in K-12 environments annually since
2006. I have also been active in designing and implementing school day and
after school programming, as well as a considerable amount of professional
development for educators, both within the duties with my agency as a program director
and as an independent consultant to school districts and community-based
organizations.

I have been
listening to teachers copiously. Teachers are the key to student success but
now teachers are expected to perform many duties well beyond their expectation
when they graduate from a school of education. The climate is challenging and
the demands are tremendous. But teachers are passionate about their students
and the process of learning. Teachers also model life-long learning.

If we are
expecting our students to succeed, we need to fully support their teachers with
the resources and tools to meet that expectation. Quality workshops,
comprehensive accessibility to new methods, media innovations, peer mentoring,
a way to gauge and assess one’s own practice and learn from others are all
essential. Additionally, the way a teacher develops his/her teaching practice
is best supported by the mentoring of those with experience and demonstrated
success of their own. The seasoned teacher shares and supports those new to the
field and the new teachers bring an enthusiasm that can be a “booster shot” for
the educator with many years in the classroom, along with new developments in
the field.

We are also
faced with a change of the classroom environment that is the result of the
technological/digital evolution of the past 10 – 15 years. Proficiency in core
content is necessary but how we deliver the lessons has changed in many ways.
The need to train and support teachers, even those who are fully confident with
all aspects of digital media, so that teachers are able to guide and prepare
our youth for the world they encounter on the other side of the wall is vital
to success as well.

In addition,
with the current rhetoric in community and the political arena, community
engagement in our schools has never been more crucial. Funding sources beyond
the local, state, and federal funding for schools must be identified and
maximized. Allies among the citizens of our communities must be fostered to
protect our schools and their purpose, which is to develop our children into
competent, informed, critical thinkers, citizens who will steer our communities
in the years ahead, who will build and this nation as we move forward. It is
more than the scope and sequence of learning, it is the wonder of discovery that
teachers seed in their students. We need to also support that wonder and thirst
in our teachers so they have the fuel they need to continue entering their
classrooms with the enthusiasm than is transmitted to the young ones before
them daily. The future sits in those desks. The future deserves the best and
teachers deserve the ability to realize their own full capability as the
foundation for that future.

Our nation needs
to return to trusting that teachers are actually the best gauges of learning in
their classrooms and that they are trained professionals who deserve respect
for their career choices. Teachers know how to teach and are successful when
consistently supported with adequate funding, resources, environments, and
professional development. Changing the rules every few years, imposing testing
schedules that seriously limit instruction time, and limiting creative inquiry
in the classroom create tension in both students and teachers, which I believe
is at the heart of the perceived failure of our schools, not the tenure
process. It is short-sighted to think that the current national movement is an
adequate solution to the problem and that teachers are the cause. Not enough of
the decision makers in public education or the politicians have the experience
of teaching within the constraints they create and legislate, nor do they
understand the pressures in today's classrooms and/or what a child at any age
may bring in with them from the home and the outer world. We must provide
teachers the scaffold they need to shine and, in turn, for their students to do
so. It takes each and every one of us to accomplish this lofty goal but I
believe it is possible.

About Me

I am a poet based in Central New York, I have published two collections of poetry, one chapbook, and coauthored a text for teachers on poetry in public classrooms. I serve as an board member of the Comstock Writers Group and managing editor of their literary journal, the Comstock Review. Additionally, I am a faculty member and workshops coordinator of the Downtown Writer's Center (the Syracuse, NY, chapter of the YMCA Writers Voice); and a teaching artist specializing in literacy, reading comprehension, professional development, and arts-based learning through the vehicle of poetry. Thanks for visiting my blog. I hope you will make many return trips to view my comments and add your own.

Fall DWC Readings Draw to a Close
-
The fall season at the DWC is winding down and what a tremendous success!
Now in our 11th year, we have had the best attendance for our reading
series in o...

6 years ago

Search This Blog

Translate

Unsung Heroes Video Profile

This is a lovely video of me by the talented Keith Kobland, of Syracuse University's News Services, from the 2014 Unsung Heroes Awards. What an honor!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG0SqyOgNVg

"Our Difficult Sunlight" is available at amazon.com, powells.com, & barnesandnoble.com.

"I dove into "Our Difficult Sunlight" as a colleague, eager to exercise in the refreshing intelligence and heart of Popoff and Lansana - hoping to discover new teaching approaches, new tools to open up literacy and redress cultural inequity, renewed excitement about the power of art. I got all that and more in the generous, abundant, fierce gifts that fill every page. However, I completed my first swim through their sea renewed as an artist myself, eager to apply my own hand and voice to the fundamental act of making things that matter. After a career spent in developing the field of teaching artistry, I found myself humbled and honored to be considered a colleague of teaching artists who bring mastery of artistic and learning processes together in such a beautiful and effective way." - Eric Booth, author of "The Music Teaching Artist's Bible" and "The Everyday Work of Art," and International Arts Learning Consultant

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, Manning Marable's dense and copious work, the last of his life, also nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

Ready Player One, Ernest Cline's first novel in which he peers into the virtual reality of 2045, yet full of 80s memorabilia.

Vocabulary of Silence, a stunning book of poetry by Veronica Golos.Just Kids, Patti Smith's poignant and tender memoir of her life as a young artist, and the love between her and Robert Mapplethorpe.The Bad Secret, Judith Harris' collection of poems is a quiet, constrained triumph of healing.

We Got Here, Wendy Mnookin's first collection from BOA, the poems of fear, surrender, and triumph as the mother of a heroin addict.

Blue Front, Martha Collins' astounding and very significant book-length poem that investigates racism in America, through the circumstance of an appalling lynching in Cairo, OH, in the early 20th century.

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow Is Enuf, Ntozake Shange's timeless investigation of the dreams, pains, fears, and successes of young women of color. Sadly and gloriously still highly relevant.

My Music of the Moment...

WISE UP GHOST!!! Elvis Costello and the Roots (notice a trend here?!)

Justin TimberlakeBeethoven's 9th SymphonyAnything by the Pimps of Joytime!!!Betty Wright with the Roots (who could resist?)Etta James Etta James Etta James!Anything by the RootsAloe BlaccMayer HawthorneBettye LaVetteCee-LoDamian MarleyAnthony Hamilton (of course)

Favorite Films I Recommend

Beyond the Sea

Henry Poole Is Here

The Great Buck Howard

Get Low

Ghost Town

The Answer Man

The Invention of Lying [my current favorite]

The Big Lebowski (#1 Choice - I am a Little Lebowski Urban Achiever)

Radio Lab

Postscript

I appreciate you for visiting my blog and sharing my thoughts with me. As I navigate my life as a poet, wending through as a teaching artist in both the public school system and community as a teaching artist, I will offer my perspectives on craft, pedagogy, politics, the sky over my head, perhaps. I hope you find likemindedness, inspiration, and humor as you walk the labyrinth that is inside my head with me . Namaste.